Skimmers & starfish

[agoutihead]

What do you guys think?

We dont know what starfish eat, and we dont know everything we are pulling out of the water with a skimmer.

Do you think there is a better chance of keeping a starfish in a tank with, or with out a skimmer?

And I'm thinking either fromia or orange linkia... something that is known to live for a while.

And not blue linkia, I know you usually need much more live rock.

 

[davewbush]

Use a skimmer. The starfish eat algae or meat that is on the suface of the rock or sand. They are not filter feeders that take things out of the water table, which is what skimmers take out. IMO

 

[pledosophy]

Just to play devil's advocate, if the skimmer is taking out waste that will turn into algae and or feed other fauna, then the skimmer is taking food away from the starfish.

I don't have an opinion either way really.

 

[agoutihead]

See thats my view.

YEAH it takes out bad stuff.

But you can not tell me that it also doesnt remove good stuff.

People say "well I'd rather get rid of the bad stuff, so be it with the good stuff"

Dont forget, a lot of coral are filter feeders to a certain degree.

Sure things like Dendros rely heavily on filter feeding and thats not the norm.

But you mean to tell me that everything else isnt filter feeding something in some way?

I have never run a skimmer on my tank, and honestly, my coral looks ridiculous.

My tank has been set up for about 7-8 months, so I dont have years of research on this particular tank.

But I've never ran a skimmer and always had some unreal looking coral.

Now I do do water changes every 2-3 weeks.

Usually about 5 gallons.

Right now this is a 26 gallon bow, but in a month I will be upgrading to a 50 gallon custom built acrylic AIO cube.

I'm DEBATING putting a Tunze 9002 on it.

Its one of the best skimmers on the market rated for the lowest gph.

So if I do skim, I will skim lightly.

But now I can play devils advocate:

Am I also removing a good portion of what the skimmer does during water changes?

Its kind of a double edged sword...

But with doing a water change, I'm probably not taking nearly as much in concentration as a skimmer would, and I'm also replacing nutrients and minerals via a water change.

So thats double bubble for my buck.

 

[ds4x4]

put some nori on a rock, keep the skimmer and call it a day

 

[luther1200]

Whats with the spaces. I stopped reading it a 1/3 of the way down.

 

[mat167]

I wouldn't go with the orange linckia either, I haven't had good long term success with them

 

[odyssey1]

I use a skimmer on my tank and have 2 sand sifting stars for 2yrs. I know they arnt the coolest looking stars but I still get the same reacting from people when they see them.

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

It's pretty evident that the linkia and fromia stars are eating from the substrate and not from the water column. So, I doubt that the skimmer is directly removing anything they eat. However, it is possible that the lower nutrients you get from having a skimmer might result in less of whatever it is that they eat. Since we really don't know what these guys eat, I'd say it is a bit of a shot in the dark. From my understanding, the only people with long term success with these stars are people with really large established tanks with lots of live rock.

As an aside, I've owned a Fromia sp. that ended up dying due to unfortunate personal circumstances (I couldn't take care of my tank for a month due to a medical problem). Before it died, I noticed an interesting behavior. I had a Scleronephthya colony that I was keeping. When I bought the Fromia star, all it would do was hang out at the base of the sclero all day. I would move it a number of times and it would always end up there. My only guess is that it was eating something at the base of that sclero. It didn't seem that it was directly eating the sclero though, at least as far as I could tell. One idea that came to my mind was that it was eating a biofilm associated with the sclero. Pure speculation, but it's certainly possible.

 

[agoutihead]

Yes but how do you think a lot of the stuff that has settled on the rocks has gotten there?

Most of it was at one ponit suspended in the water column and fell, or was blown there or something. Now algaes and baterias do grow right on the rock sure, but I'm just saying...

Ying/Yang I suppose.